Drink and the Lancashire Press p133

Abstract

The UK Alliance, the organisation set up to campaign for legal restrictions on drink, presented this digest of Lancashire press reports where drink was involved, for the last six months of 1929. It gives some fascinating insights into behaviour, and attitudes to this, in the late nineteen twenties.

22. Schoolmaster sentenced to three years’ penal servitude for uttering forged currency note. He had lost several positions through drink.
23. Motor driver charged with larcency : opened gas-meter to obtain money for drink.
24. Collector charged with embezzlement : given way to drink : spent money which did not belong to him.

D. MATRIMONIAL (193 cases).
TYPICAL CASES.
1. Husband bound over – assaulted wife : forearm fractured : had been drinking.
2. Attempted suicide after cruelty to wife : bound over to abstain from drink.
3. Separation : struck wife ten days after baby was born : continually drinking.
4. Husband kicks wife on legs and body : drags her by the hair. “This man has no right to take any drink at all,” says superintendent.
5. Husband and wife separated four times. “It is only drink that is the cause of the trouble.”
6. “My husband is threatening to shoot me, please send help at once.” The police arrive to find a man apparently drunk and suffering from delirium.
7. Husband summoned for persistent cruelty : drunk every day : sometimes blind drunk and unable to walk.
8. Separation for persistent cruelty : husband drunk every day : assaulted wife and constable.
9. Separation order : husband had promised to turn teetotal but failed.
10. Husband in arrears for maintenance but had money for drink.
11. Husband seeks discharge of maintenance order : he saw his wife go into several public-houses with another man and afterwards home with him.
12. Drinking wife summons husband for neglect.
13. Separation : husband often returned home drunk : chased his wife out of house with a carving knife in his hand : two children : 10 months and 2 years.
14. Wife knocked to the floor : held by hair : kept without food for days.
15. Wife applies for separation : married thirty years : always quarrelling : both husband and wife drunk.
16. Married forty years : wife asks for separation : husband always drunk.
17. Man charged with unlawfully and maliciously wounding his wife with axe : splintered bone : had been drinking heavily.